


Ravening

by SplinterCell



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Noncon due to aforementioned monster and mind control, Supernatural Elements, predatory monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28988172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplinterCell/pseuds/SplinterCell
Summary: Some creatures prefer to hunt in the winter months.
Relationships: Jack Rollins/Brock Rumlow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Ravening

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to the wonderful Underthefridge for agreeing to look this over.

He adores this time of year—the long, grim months when the world is held fast in winter’s freezing claws.

And the humans, oh the _humans_. Pushing back the lengthening shadows with their silly little strings of lights and glittering baubles. The rituals change as they forsake one god for another, but their desperation doesn’t. 

The need to connect, to be wanted. To have a family. Companionship.

Their need to be _loved_.

They can more easily push it aside when the sun shines, the flowers bloom, and every day bursts with hope. But hope is such a fragile thing, so easily lost, and it quickly withers and dies in the cold, wet, dark days of winter.

\---

Snow gave way to rain earlier in the day, which then froze as the sun set and the temperature fell, and now the sidewalks are treacherously icy. 

But the humans remain undeterred. Revellers spill out onto the road from bars and restaurants, packing the street around him. They slip and skid along with reckless abandon; their faces shining under the multi-coloured lights that criss-cross above their heads, and their loud laughter piercing the chill night air.

Most of them are of no interest to him, but one does catch his eye: a pretty female with delicate features standing in a group of males. They are having fun, but the female is clearly bored even though its mate stands beside it, and its attention is elsewhere.

He pauses, sniffing the air. He could have this one, he thinks. It wouldn’t be too hard to separate it from its mate; humans are highly suggestible and this one is looking for a reason—any reason—to get away.

But it wouldn’t be a filling meal, he decides. The female is no longer satisfied with its choice of mate, but it is not yet unhappy, and there is nothing to stop it from seeking a more suitable partner.

No, he needs something else. Something… tastier.

\---

There are no revellers in this part of town. 

The streets here are narrower, the buildings older. The few decorations to be seen are cheap and old; tatty foil garlands hung haphazardly across greasy windows and sad plastic trees sitting unloved in shop corners.

There are no celebrations here, no music. The humans he passes are little more than drab, grey shapes shuffling through the darkness, or slumped in doorways and almost indistinguishable from the trash bags piled haphazardly along the sidewalk.

There is no joy to be found here, no merriment. No exclamations of peace and good will.

 _Oh yes_ , he thinks, licking his lips. _Now this is more like it._

\---

The place he ends up in is little more than a dimly lit, narrow basement. 

The bar sits against one wall, booths along the other. The floor underfoot is tacky with spilled beer, and the air is rancid with sweat. A TV set high on the wall in one corner is on, but no-one seems to be paying it any attention.

He takes a deep breath as he looks around and holds it in his lungs. Misery hangs so thick in the air that he can almost taste it.

Here are the dregs of the humans’ society, the ones that have fallen between the cracks and who mean nothing to anybody. They sit hunched over grimy tables with their hands clasped around their chosen ticket to oblivion; united in their hopelessness even as despair prevents them from seeking comfort even in each other. Their pitiful little lives could end in this place and no-one would care.

He walks the length of the room unseen, inhaling each human’s suffering as he tries to decide what he wants. Most are intense but one-dimensional—sour humiliation following a perfunctory paid-for sexual encounter; rich, smoky hatred festering in the aftermath of infidelity; putrid shame accompanying a disturbing sexual awakening.

It’s all good, but there’s something better; a complex, bitter mixture of guilt, grief, self-loathing, and rage—oh, and something else, too. Something so sweet that the barest hint of it makes his mouth water.

He slips into the booth and drops the glamour. There are four empty bottles on the table and a fifth on the go, but the human looks up more sharply than he had expected. 

A male. Perfect.

“The fuck do you want?” it snarls. Its green eyes are red-rimmed, its face narrow and angular, with sunken cheeks and an ugly scar along its jaw. It is very different to the female he saw earlier, but he already knows he’s made the right choice.

 **You know me. You recognise me,** he pushes, and the human’s expression shifts as his suggestion worms its way into its brain and takes hold, using the human’s own mind to reshape his body; longer hair, darker skin, a thicker build, lean but powerful.

“No…” the human whispers, shaking its head. “No, this can’t… Oh, Jesus Christ.” It reaches out a trembling hand to touch his face, tears beginning to flow down its own. “ _Brock_?” 

He smiles at it, full of teeth, and leans forward. **Take me home.**

\---

The human cries almost constantly. 

It cries as they trudge through the dark streets to where it lives, clutching his arm with both its hands, as though it is afraid he’ll disappear if it doesn’t.

It cries when they enter the grimy little den it calls home. It hovers by the door, red-faced and ashamed as he looks around the cramped room. There are dishes piled in the sink that must be at least a week old, and empty food cartons lying discarded on the bare floor. There is a flimsy table with one chair sitting next to the dirty window, and a bare mattress on the floor.

It looks down when he turns back to it. “I’m sorry,” it whispers, hands twisting around each other.

 **Look at me,** he orders, but it doesn’t.

He walks over to it, and it cringes back against the door. **Look at me when I’m talking to you.** This time it complies, and he leans in until he can smell the alcohol on its breath. **Kiss me.**

It cries when he kisses it, too, and when he licks the salt from its skin. 

It cries when he pushes it onto the mattress and strips it out of its clothes, its hands fluttering helplessly against its body as he looks it over. 

The female he had seen earlier had been young, well-fed, and healthy. This one is older and showing the signs of hard living spent on the margins of human society. Its body is thin where the female’s would have been plump, its skin coarse and lined where the female’s would have been soft and supple.

It goes to turn onto its stomach, but he stops it with a heavy hand. 

**I want to see you feel every moment of this,** he says, and the human shudders as the command sinks into its unconscious, before it nods and holds its legs open wide.

It cries, too, when he pushes inside it—its voice rising in a thin, reedy wail until it breaks, and then soundlessly gasping for air as he forces himself deeper and deeper inside.

It cries with each hard thrust, and its tears stain the mattress beside its head. But it doesn’t look away, and it doesn’t close its eyes. It cries, but it takes what he gives it, and when at long last he’s done and sated, it reaches a hand between its legs and gasps the same name it had said earlier until it finds its own release.

And then it _thanks_ him.

\---

He uses its body many more times that night.

The wound the human carries in its heart is a fathomless wellspring of pain. It flows bright and sharp with every touch, and he gorges himself on it until finally he can’t anymore.

Sunrise is at least a couple of hours away when he gets up, and the sky is still pitch-black outside. The human had been unconscious, but it stirs the moment he moves. It takes a moment to realise where it is and what is happening, and then its eyes widen.

But this time it doesn’t cry. It begs. It begs him to stay, to not leave. Not again. It begs for more time at the least. 

Just a day. One day.

A couple of hours, even.

One hour. 

Five minutes.

 _Anything_.

“Just don’t go yet,” it pleads, in its soft, beautiful, broken voice.

But as enticing as the human is with fresh bruises littering its skin, he has eaten and eaten well, and he has no further need for it.

 **You will sleep** , he orders, pushing the command deep into its mind. **Right now** , he adds, when the human tries to fight it, and the human falls back onto the mattress as if it were a puppet with its strings suddenly cut.

 _Yes_ , he thinks, stepping out into the biting early morning air; _winter is the best season of all_.


End file.
